Focus This Issue: Operational Internal Control

The purpose of the Briefing is to provide our colleagues at USG institutions and other stakeholders with substantive summaries of audit policy issues we have encountered concerning governance, risk management and internal control audits.  While we will not focus on the institutions themselves, we will provide an overview of the related policy and the relevant details of our audit findings and related recommendations. 

In this issue, we will focus on operational internal control issues in human resources, grant management and information technology.  Our lead discussion looks at the USG policy concerning requirements for employment background investigations as an auditable action item. 

The USG Human Resource Department is under new leadership!  Our new Vice Chancellor for Human Resources, Marion Fedrick is revising the USG Human Resource Practice Manual and taking a look at all personnel policies to determine how to enhance employment services for USG employees. This is a significant task and requires extensive coordination of USG policies with employment law. We want to extend a special “Thank You” to Marion Fedrick for providing her thoughts for this article.

As HR undergoes this process, the OIAC is supporting this effort through our focus on human resource audit issues. Our assistance includes helping institutions identify those policies that may become auditable issues and detailing how institutions may begin to synchronize their internal HR policies and practices with the USG Human Resources Practice Manual.  Our review of the requirements for background investigations provides our readers with a head start on, at least, reviewing one policy central to sound employment practices.

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, and welcome any thoughts or feedback about this publication.  Thank you for reading.

Sincerely, John M. Fuchko, III, CIA, CCEP​